MTN Uganda Execs Deported, US Universities Ditch Huawei Under Trump Pressure, Google Fined Over GDPR Breach

Africa

MTN Uganda executives deported

Three MTN Uganda executives have been deported for allegedly being involved in espionage. MTN Uganda Chief Marketing Officer, Olivier Prentout, Head of Sales and Distribution, Annie Bilenge Tabura, and Elza Muzzolini, Head of Mobile Financial Services, were all arrested within the past week and deported to their respective countries. They have been accused of compromising national security and inciting violence in Uganda. “MTN Uganda has not been officially notified of the grounds for Mr Prentout and Mrs Bilenge’s arrests and deportation,” an MTN spokesperson said. MTN Uganda’s license expired in October last year but was given a 60-day operating license despite requesting for a 10-year license. Last year, police raided the data centres of MTN Uganda and disconnected four servers.

Uber Lite launched for low connectivity areas

Ride-hailing app, Uber, has launched Uber Lite to make it easier to book rides in areas with low connectivity and slow internet speeds. The android-based application, launched in South Africa, has a new interface that will make it easier for people with limited data plans to book rides. Uber Lite is ten times smaller and the size of three selfies at just 5MB. Uber Lite was first rolled out in India in 2018.

The Americas

Private tweets were public for years

Twitter has admitted that tweets set to “private” status were actually public when some changes were made to user accounts on the android app. The report said users who updated their email addresses between November 2014 and January 2019 could have had their messages exposed due to the security flaw. Twitter couldn’t determine how many users were affected and was therefore issuing a public notification about the situation, reports say.

US universities to stop using Huawei equipment under pressure from Trump

US universities have started unplugging from Chinese equipment made by Huawei and ZTE to avoid losing funding from government, Reuters is reporting. The Trump administration has accused Chinese tech companies of using their equipment to help Beijing spy on users.
The Trump administration went ahead to sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law, meaning any institution receiving government funding could not procure telecom equipment made by Huawei, ZTE, and a few selected Chinese firms. In response, University of California in Berkeley and UC San Diego have taken steps to either stop using equipment from the two Chinese firms or decided to halt any negotiation or funding arrangement they have gone into with the firms.

Fortnite gamer groomed children for exploitation

A 41 year old man has been accused of using popular game, Fortnite, to initiate sexual activity with children. Florida police say Anthony Gene Thomas used Fortnite’s voice chat to meet children. Fortnite’s Battle Royale is an online multiplayer game in which players battle it out to become the “last man” standing. Players normally team up into squads and work together, giving them the opportunity to communicate with each other. Anthony Gene Thomas is alleged to have used this feature to groom a 17 year old with cash and gifts. Police believe 20 other children could have been groomed by Thomas via the same method.

WhatsApp limits message forwarding to fight fake news

WhatsApp is restricting users to sharing the same message only five times in a bid to fight the spread of fake news. Until this policy, users were able to forward one message up to 20 times. It is believed several mob lynchings were perpetuated due to mass-forwarding on the Facebook-owned platform. The move “will help keep WhatsApp focused on private messaging with close contacts,” a company spokesperson said.

Europe

Man charged for flying drone near Heathrow Airport

George Rusu, a 38 year old man from Hillingdon, has been charged with flying a drone near Heathrow Airport, the BBC says. George Rusu is being charged with flying “small unmanned aircraft without permission of air traffic control”. The event occurred on December 24, days after a similar incident caused 1000s of flights to be grounded at Gatwick Airport.

Google fined €50 million over GDPR

The French data regulator, CNIL, has fined Google to the tune of €50 million for breaching EU’s data guidelines. CNIL cites a general lack of transparency from the internet giant for the record fine. The regulator said people were not adequately informed about how Google collected data to inform its personalised advertisement policy. The fine comes after two complaints by privacy rights activists were filed in 2018 against the internet company. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation was approved by EU parliament in 2016 and came into effect in April 2018 to harmonize data privacy rules across Europe. Amazon and Apple are also facing data complaints from EU citizens over breach of GDPR.

Asia

GBCI Ventures launches $100 million smart city fund

GBCI Ventures, a Singapore-based smart city investor, has launched a $100 million development fund for investments in smart city technologies. GBCI is already in talks with over 50 startups and aims to nurture a smart cities ecosystem. It will do this by providing access to technology, market support, and capital injections to regional and global startups, the report said. GBCI Ventures invests in robotics, big data, IoT, and VR to support the development of green, sustainable smart cities.

Tencent news app censured for sharing ‘vulgar’ content

The Cyberspace Administration of China, CAC, has criticised a Tencent-owned app, Tiantian Kuaibao, for producing “vulgar information that damaged the online environment.” This is part of an ongoing clean up of the internet ecosystem, Xinhuanet has reported. Over the past six months, the internet watchdog has deleted over 7 million harmful content while almost 10,000 mobile apps have been removed from stores. Some of the gaming apps were said to have overcharged users or stolen information, Reuters reports. Tiantian Kuaibao is a daily news application producing content in China.